Penn State debacle elevates importance of crisis planning for communications professionals

Ad Age reported yesterday that Penn State's Board of Trustees has engaged a PR firm to provide crisis communications counsel. Last week it was reported that Joe Paterno, after his firing, hired his own public relations counsel. Too little, too late.

Arguably, the sordid Jerry Sandusky story first broke in March 2011 when Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim wrote about the grand jury investigation. The mainstream media picked up on it after the grand jury report was made public earlier this month.

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Now, weeks later, after public opinion has already been formed and the university has already taken numerous slings and arrows for its botched response, Penn State enlists the help that it should have had months ago.

This is a strong lesson for communications professionals on the importance of crisis planning. The time to plan a response to a crisis is long before the news goes public. Penn State had months -- if not years -- to prepare for the day that this story would be made public. Many of the Penn State officials who are now under a dark cloud of scrutiny were called to testify before the grand jury. It's not like this was unexpected.

Near motorcycle crash is a lesson in crisis communications

This past Memorial Day, I nearly died. My motorcycle skidded on a patch of wet leaves, throwing me left then right. It could have been bad.

A leg crushed under the bike. Or worse, my head hitting the pavement. Instead, I kept the bike upright. It all happened in an instant.

But as I unpacked the event, I realized there a lot of parallels between the near-accident and the crisis communications work we do at Gregory FCA.

Invest in quality equipment. On the bike, I was wearing a helmet, sturdy boots, and thick riding gloves, so even if I lost control I still might have averted serious injury (although the damage to the bike would have been catastrophic). Even before a crisis hits, organizations must equip themselves with a basic toolset to marginalize risk, including:

• A working group list including contact information for all key players in a crisis is essential and should be compiled far in advance. This should also include contact information for important outside resources, such as the PR firm and outside counsel. It should include all pertinent contact information such as office, cell, and home phone numbers (including vacation homes -- what if the CEO is at her house in Florida when the crisis hits?), e-mail addresses, etc. Nobody wants to run around tracking down e-mail addresses and cell numbers when the pressure is on.

The top 10 public relations trends of 2011

What a time to be in public relations! The world keeps evolving faster and faster for those of us who revel in the media, and love technology and all that it unlocks. So with the start of 2011, it's always a good time to look ahead at the trends that will change our industry in the year to come.

1. Integration will be everything. No longer will traditional public relations and social media exist on islands. The two will meld together as part of a bigger, broader whole simply defined as public relations. We call this transformation the great move from "public relations to public relationships." And it's encompassing every aspect of corporate communications, including media buying and advertising, to lift the impact of entire communications campaigns. Essentially, integrated PR becomes a force multiplier for the universe of marketing.

Media malpractice or more?

Was the Quran-burning story a result of media malfeasance or an example of a non-story made a story by the legitimacy of others? 

What started as a tweet in July gave way to one of the most unimportant and over-reported stories of the year. And only by analyzing the media's response to Pastor Terry Jones' threat to burn a copy of the Quran can we appreciate the more nuanced side of public opinion and reputation management.



How could an unknown, unimportant, fringe figure with only 30 followers come to dominate national headlines for nearly a week? And why, at a time of great national economic and political uncertainty, did the media invest so many resources in such a non-story, overlooking real news with true gravitas?

Certainly, it could have all been the lunacy of the situation, juxtaposed against the mosque-building controversy near Ground Zero. For those in the media who support the building of the mosque, the Quran burning provides further evidence of anti-Islam sentiment and ices an already slippery slope they believe America is headed down.

But dig deeper and you discover that the real fan of the flame had nothing to do with New York mosque-building or media bent left or right. Rather, the Quran story is a perfect example of how we as PR counsels have to advise our clients. Every day, we must remind our clients that every issue does not warrant a response, and commenting to or about lunatics is a surefire way of elevating a story best left untold.

I am reminded of a recent issue about an iron manufacturer that was facing allegations of hiring illegal immigrants. A distorted and heavily edited YouTube video suggested as much. But the issue itself was nothing more than a union trying to undermine an open-shop business. Enraged, the client wanted to go on the offensive and make public the union's dirty tricks.

The smarter tact, though, was to ignore a potentially inflammatory situation that if handled poorly, could have transformed the client into a central figure in a national debate over illegal workers. We urged them to relent. They listened. They went back to selling iron, no less the wear.

In the case of Pastor Terry Jones, the story became a story after Gen. David Petraeus, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and President Barack Obama either reached out or chimed in on the issue, thus elevating it to the status of news. Pastor Jones rode the coattails of other men's errors and gained weight and prominence. Once this standard was met, media were free to cover the issue with impunity as to their own wisdom. A non-news story became news because of another's mismanagement.

It's a common situation -- one we as PR practitioners increasingly face in a world where anyone can gain voice, no matter their legitimacy. The Internet provides the forum. But does it all require a response? The answer depends on:

1. Are you effectively monitoring? Averting self-triggered communication annihilation is often as easy as knowing what's being said about you, your company, and its brand. In the Quran case, media were monitoring the situation, and knew that Islamic media were covering it. But that wasn't enough to elevate the issue to a story domestically. Rather it required legitimate responses from legitimate sources -- Petraeus, Gates, and Obama -- to trigger coverage. If level heads had prevailed, they would have realized that Terry Jones did not warrant a response, and the risk of doing so was transforming it into a national media story.

2. Who is the source and is it legitimate? Terry Jones was only legitimized after national figures responded to him. Our military and political figures need to stay clear of the lunatic fringe, rather than invite them into the dialogue.

3. Who are the influencers? The hothouse of the Internet can incubate non-stories into stories. CNN's Rick Sanchez, who first covered this story stateside after seeing it on Twitter in July, did us all a disservice by not ignoring a tweeting moron.

4. Is there any way to respond short of a public forum? Political and military leaders have a full arsenal of tools to respond. Does it have to be public, in light of media scrutiny?

5. Who responds, if a response is required? The Terry Jones case is directly analogous to any number of comments that take place 24/7 online. Those that require a response can often be taken care of by service-level employees, not the CEO. By elevating the response to Terry Jones to the most powerful people in the world, a story was made, the die was cast, and the rest of the madness ensued.

How conspiracy theories affect reputation management

Why is it that some stories that don't make sense often get stuck in the public's consciousness and can never be dislodged?

Even if they're ridiculous. Unsubstantiated. Absurd. So the story of the Bush Administration's orchestration of 9/11 continues to resurface. And an increasing percentage of Americans believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Conspiracy theory affects the easily influenced and persuaded but it also infects bright minds and the level headed. Why?

Because we all share a basic human need to want to believe that our lives are far from haphazard. Our minds are constantly working to convert chaos to order. We believe that events are somehow driven by a hidden hand, a plan, or even a conspiracy. And so we look for meaning even where none exists.

For us, it's too painful to believe that a nondescript group of hijackers could commandeer commercial airliners, kill more than 3,000 innocent human beings, trigger wars, and inflame global hostility. Similarly, it's impossible to acknowledge that a troubled loner could, with a single shot, murder the most powerful leader in the world. The cosmos can't work in such ways. They are too fantastic of stories that demand back stories, so we fill them in to alleviate our own discomfort.

The human tendency to replace the unexplainable with an explanation has an inverse effect as well. When the evidence suggests that a conspiracy has led to a specific result, we often disbelieve our own eyes and instead replace the obvious truth with an imagined outcome.

Such is the case of my personal hero, Lance Armstrong. I first came to love Lance in 1999, when he won his first Tour de France after beating cancer. I read his books, fell in love with the story, and hung a framed poster of Lance in my office as a reminder of victory over adversity. And even though my own eyes were telling me something different, I believed it all.

Here was a guy who got off death's bed to lift himself over the Alps and Pyrenees, faster and higher than anyone else. His performances were super human. I wrote speeches about Armstrong's accomplishment for my clients to read at sales conferences. I told and retold the stories of how Lance cracked the field and beat the mountains seven times to win the most grueling of athletic endeavors.

And yet, there were signs everywhere that he, like most top-ranked cyclists of that era, had cheated. A number of his lieutenants, those that have ridden on his team, had intermittently come forward with allegations. An alleged positive drug test for EPO was made public by a French newspaper. A teammate testified in court that he overheard Lance tell doctors about his illicit drug use while being treated for cancer.

His retirement from the sport, while at the top of his game, and then his ill-timed return, suggested that he struggled with the risk of getting caught, only to return to the sport once it had cleaned itself up to prove he could win in a clean and fair race.

Then, there was the mushroom cloud effect of US Postal-Lance's old cycling team. Many of its members were Americans. Many became world-class cyclists quickly. Compared to US soccer, where America has worked for decades to achieve international success, cycling did it in a few short years. I should have wondered at that point, could there be more to the story? Could they have just been good at sharing the secrets of doping?

My denial of all things Lance Armstrong was nothing more than a reverse conspiracy theory. Lance was clean because of the back story that preceded his every performance. The dots had already been filled in for me. This was not random. It was the result of greatness with the proof being his conquering of cancer. It allowed me to blind myself to the apparent truth-one that is now the subject of a Federal investigation.

Brutally put, Lance Armstrong cheated. And not only did he cheat, but he probably did it in a revolutionary, systemic way, infecting others by sharing and educating them through his team to the wonders of performance enhancing drugs. Unfortunately, the very greatness of his accomplishments should have raised suspicion. It didn't. The backstory assured me.

So what does this all have to do with reputation management? Truth is often determined more by storytelling (of the lack thereof) rather than the facts of a circumstance. The more we can back fill a story, the greater the chance of we can preserve a legacy or reputation. Without the story, our hands are tied.

I once represented an institution that suffered the grave suicidal loss of a patient under their care. There was no other reason for the loss other than the patient was troubled. But nothing could be communicated about the events out of deference to patient privacy. The story was not there. The dots didn't connect. The Institution paid a terrific price.

On the other hand, there have been instances where clients have faced real threat. But the backstory was intact. The price paid was much lesser than when the story was absent. As public relations professionals, it is our charge to craft the story with truth and humanity to preserve the integrity of those we serve.

Gregory FCA e-book: The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media

Many of you attended our national media panel in April, "The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media." We've provided you several resources as an outgrowth to it, including the podcast, video, and transcript from the event.

Now the last piece has fallen in place. We've published the complete transcript of the event as an e-book that you can enjoy and learn from at your leisure. There are a few ways you can read it.

• Scroll through it on Google Books.
• Download the PDF.
• Read it on your Kindle by right clicking this e-book link, and selecting "save link as." Connect your Kindle to your computer and drag and drop the file over to your Kindle.

We hope you enjoy the e-book and learn something from it. Feel free to share and print it as an educational resource.

The media are not our friends

As PR practitioners, we often fall into the trap of believing that relationships trump all, and that by being open and transparent with the media, we stand the best chance of winning favorable coverage. But underneath it all, the media's agenda is vastly different than our own.

Reporters are rarely promoted or rewarded for writing a positive story about a business, person, or politician. Rather, their own success often depends on exposing the negative, uncovering the wrong, and seeing the opposite in what is projected by the world.

Good thing, too. Without that skepticism, the value of public relations would be forever diminished. It's only through the prism of objectivity that media coverage gains its power. This is precisely why the consuming public values media more than marketing. A reporter's scrutiny confers believability. Skepticism portrays the reality of the world, and plays more authentically to the audience.

That's often not easy for clients to understand. A few years ago, I worked with a financial services company that was profiled in The Wall Street Journal. The story was positive in every way, except for a quote from an outside analyst the reporter turned to for a counterpoint. The client went ballistic, claiming that the entire article had been impugned.

I took up the fight and explained that quite to the contrary, it was the counterpoint that gave the article its weight and legitimacy. By finding a negative, the reporter did us the favor of demonstrating objectivity, and conferred a degree of credibility we never could have achieved through simple advertising.

The client never agreed with me. We went our separate ways. Philosophically we never connected on the real power of PR as more than just a tool for exposure, but rather a vehicle for credibility in a world full of illegitimacy.

So in a world where the media are not our friends, we as PR professionals need to act accordingly, remembering:

A client's interest trumps a media relationship. A dirty little secret of PR is that many practitioners would rather error on the side of the client, rather than alienate a media contact. But the media are big boys and girls. They understand the dance we enter into, and have short memories when you enter the arena as a worthy adversary.

No comment is sometimes the best response. It's become a tired refrain in PR to never say "no comment." Too often, that counsel comes from PR people who simply don't want to alienate a media contact who they might need in the future. After decades of high-risk crisis work, I have come to realize that no comment often does more to protect the interests of a client than some half-baked empty response that nibbles at the corners of liability. No further comment.

The media love no one. This is why Gen. Stanley McChrystal got tattooed last week. He believed that if he could just bring the reporter into his world, and share with him the blood and guts (and finger-pointing) of war, the coverage would be favorable. The big egos often fall into this trap. You see it all the time in sports. Athletes believe they're beloved by the media, and then can't understand when the media turns on them. Tiger Woods fell victim when, during his press conference, he attacked the media for stalking him and his family. In reality, Tiger was devastated to realize that the media never loved him. He was just a story. When access was easy, the storytelling was favorable. When it became difficult, they did what they had to do to get the story. They didn't love him. Never did.

Manage the negativity, but don't discount it. I have used 101 techniques in my day to prevent the negative from being exposed by the media. Heck, I once holed up a Santa Clause in a hotel after he was accosted and the media wanted to report on crime in my client's mall. But important stories have two sides. It's the presentation of both sides that comforts the audience and opens them to a more worthy perspective.

Five notions about social media that must die

This Tuesday, we brought together a number of clients to share an evening of discussion about the issues their companies are facing with regard to social media. It was an interesting mix of people and businesses. Different industries, different problems, and a singular goal to learn from one another.

Some common themes emerged. What surprised me is that these themes are the same ones we have heard since we started taking social media seriously in 2004. While internally at our firm we feel we have come a long way in understanding the practice and implementation of social media for B2C and B2B communications, the fact is that most businesses can still be considered early adopters, even pioneers -- despite the noise level and cheerleading around social media for PR, marketing, and branding.

Here are the five themes that were common to most, if not all of our friends around the table Tuesday night.

Theme #1: Management is concerned that we can't control social media. We want control of our messages.

The Resolution: If you can't control your social media communications, then you must not be controlling any of your other communications. Your people are talking to your customers, suppliers, and partners on the phone and in e-mail. They are already representing your company. They are already the public face of the company. And they are probably already using social media to communicate, regardless of your internal policies.

Social media is nothing more than another way, a new way, for your people to communicate. Companies need to train employees on how to use it, just as companies train employees on how to present in person, on the phone, and in e-mail. This is a policy and training problem, not a technology or control problem.

Theme #2: Social media puts us at risk. The legal department will not approve our use of it. It creates a digital trail that could get us in legal trouble.

The Resolution: Social media communications are no different than e-mail or the telephone. Anyone could take any e-mail from your staff and post it on a blog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed (and they do). They could record a phone call and post it as a podcast (and they have). And I don't have to tell you that the first thing the lawyers subpoena in any case is the corporate e-mail database.

A public relations game plan for BP

So finally this weekend, we received some good news from the Gulf Coast. BP's containment dome appears to be capturing significant amounts of the oil spill, and BP CEO Tony Hayward told the BBC he expects this latest development could lead to the vast majority of the leak being captured at, or near, the well head.

Even with this news, BP is left in a disastrous PR position, forever tattooed as the perpetrator of the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Can they ever rebound? Exxon did from the Valdez oil spill, even though a recent forensic study revealed open pools of oil still scar the shoals of Prudhoe Bay, 20 years after the catastrophe.

With more than $6 billion in first quarter earnings, BP certainly has the financial wherewithal to weather the storm. But the company has to change its approach to the public, and take real and lasting steps to systemically transform itself into a company that understands the public trust it holds in its hands every time it undertakes the risky endeavor to sink a well. Here's what I would be telling BP:

1. Put up or shut up. Now that progress is being made to capture the leaking oil, it's time for BP to put up a $1 billion remediation fund for the people of Gulf Coast. Use the money to ramp up restoration. Pay off claims. Bail out busted businesses. And clean the shores and wetlands. It's a monumental challenge that takes money. BP has the money and needs to spend it now to reclaim any hope of salvaging its global reputation. It's also in the best interest of BP shareholders. Without strong and quick action, the company faces tremendous risk that can be mitigated through sincere and immediate action.

2. Put up another $200 million to fund oil industry remediation research, centered at Louisiana State University. Since Edwin Drake, the oil industry's technological breakthroughs have focused on getting oil out of the ground. Horizontal drilling. CO2 injection. Tethered platforms. Deep water drilling needs technology to keep oil in the ground or from ever hitting the ground, beaches, and oceans. The unintended consequence of Prudhoe Bay is that the world actually believes steam and paper towels can clean up an oil spill. (They can't and they don't.) Oil industry technology has to go beyond simply drilling deeper and cleaning up the mess after the fact. The industry needs to develop new technologies to contend with the risk of today's deep water drilling, whether here, in the North Sea, or off Norway.

3. Get Tony Hayward off American TV. A recent study conducted by Gregory FCA shows that Hayward's reputation has cratered since BP started airing TV commercials with him serving as spokesperson. The American ideal of a leader isn't someone who looks like Liz Lemon's fall-back love on "30 Rock," Welsey Snipes. (No, not that Wesley Snipes.)

Separated at birth: Tony Hayward ...

Wesley Snipes (not that Wesley Snipes)


Rather, we need to see and hear from a fellow American who has a vested interest in our country, not the whiny Hayward, who recently lamented that he can't wait for the crisis to be over so he can get his life back.

Mommy, why don't companies talk like human beings?

Part of the public's disappointment over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico centers on our inability to gain any real information about the catastrophe. Five-thousand feet of water presents ample opportunity to conceal the truth, and BP has done little to nothing to inform the world as to the extent of the spill.

In an industry that prides itself on numbers (I should know, because my first job was working in public relations for an energy company compiling its annual fact book), it's remarkable that BP can't calculate the rate of flow from a well that cost $1 million a day to operate.

BP's unwillingness to share these numbers suggests that the spill is much larger than being estimated. Even more troubling is why our government refuses to force BP to divulge numbers, or even send our own research vessels and scientists to gain insight.

So then you turn to BP's website. Its homepage now opens in big bold letters that read, "Gulf of Mexico Response." There are a lot of links present, some of which are way too self-serving at this point in the crisis. I do give BP credit for linking to actual press interviews, many of which challenge BP managers for answers.

Click on the "TODAY Show" interview where Matt Lauer confronts BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles. Suttles is quick to note BP's success in inserting a four-inch tube into the collapsed underwater pipeline. But Suttles gives no idea how much of an impact the procedure will make, even after Lauer analogizes the process to inserting a straw into a swimming pool.

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Now turn to BP's own press releases, and you understand why BP's public response is failing. In written communications, the company turns to engineering jargon to give little real information about the incident. It makes you wonder, why don't companies talk like human beings? In times like these, why wouldn't BP want to impart meaning, instead of confusion?

Take the opening headline of one release. It reads, "Subsea Source Control and Containment." I assume the company is trying to update us on its progress in stemming the flow of crude oil. But that's left to our best guess, when the company refuses to even speak in plain English.

You can debate whether subsea is a word or just a term of art in the oil and gas industry. After all, the sea is water, not the air above it. So the subsea must be something underneath the sea -- maybe mud, maybe bedrock, maybe oil reserves. Who knows? Wouldn't it be nice if BP had just said, "Here's an update on our efforts to contain the spill on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico?" See, I would have understood that. But then the release gets even better:

"Subsea efforts continue to focus on progressing options to stop the flow of oil from the well through interventions via the blow out preventer (BOP), and to collect the flow of oil from the leak points."

"Focus on progressing options?" What is BP trying to say? I presume it wants to say that it is simultaneously pursuing a number of options to stop the underwater oil spill by working on the blow out preventer and collecting leaking oil. But the sentence is so poorly constructed, you don't know what it is saying.

I am sure the language was all twisted and edited by round after round of legal review, as well as the industry's own prescribed methods of responding to problems.

See in da earl bidnis, there is no such thing as a spill. Note that BP calls the spill a flow and a leak point. I can just imagine the powers that be debating the difference between spills, leaks, and flows. "A leak is a drip. A spill is a calamity," they might be saying to one another over a secure teleconference between New Orleans and London.

It's an energy company trick I learned early in my career, when a vice president of public relations explained to me that coal is not black, dark, dusty, or chalky. Rather, it's rich and luminous, and should be characterized as such in all press materials.

All this answers the question, "Why can't companies talk like human beings?" Some of the smartest people in the world work in the energy business, which is precisely why they refuse to talk like human beings. Using clear and compelling language would require BP to answer the prime question, "How much oil is being spilled?" Right now, that's the last thing BP intends to tell us, and it is doing a good job of it.

Video from Gregory FCA's national media panel

We've been rolling out coverage from our recent national media panel, "The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media." I've shared with you my feedback and reactions to the conversations and insights, the podcast of the entire discussion, and today, we bring you the video capturing the event. You can watch it unfold by hitting play below. Please feel free to share it with colleagues and friends.



When you watch the video, the panelists from left to right are:

• Laurie Burkitt -- Writer, Forbes
• Riva Richmond -- Freelance Writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal
• Ted Anthony -- Assistant Managing Editor, Associated Press
• Jennifer Preston - Social Media Editor, The New York Times
• Sara Clemence -- Co-Founder and Editor, RecessionWire.com
• Brian Dresher -- Manager of Social Media and Digital Partnerships, USA Today
• Sree Sreenivasan -- Associate Professor and Dean of Student Affairs, Journalism, Columbia Journalism School

After you watch the discussion, feel free to share what you learned in the comments.

Podcast from Gregory FCA's national media panel

As promised, here is the podcast from Gregory FCA's national media panel round table, The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media. This is the complete audio from the panel discussion, which brought together top reporters, writers, editors, and managers from around the country to talk about how social and digital media is changing news and storytelling.



Panelists that you'll hear from on the podcast include:

• Ted Anthony -- Assistant Managing Editor, Associated Press
• Laurie Burkitt -- Writer, Forbes
• Sara Clemence -- Co-Founder and Editor, RecessionWire.com
• Jennifer Preston - Social Media Editor, The New York Times
• Sree Sreenivasan -- Associate Professor and Dean of Student Affairs, Journalism, Columbia Journalism School
• Riva Richmond -- Freelance Writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal
• Brian Dresher -- Manager of Social Media and Digital Partnerships, USA Today

Their insights and perspectives are from right where the rubber meets the road. There was a lot to be learned from the discussion, and I wrote about my short list of take aways the other day.

If you attended the event, give the podcast a listen for something you might have missed or want to hear again. If you didn't make it, lend your ear to find out how the media is using new communications pathways to tell more compelling stories, connect with readers, and build brands online.

If you'd like to listen to the podcast on the go in your mp3 player, you can download it to your computer by right-clicking the podcast link, and hitting "Save Link As." From there, you can upload it to your mp3 player and listen to it in the car, while jogging, etc. Or, you can also read through the transcript if you'd prefer.

We welcome everyone to leave a comment and share their thoughts on the event and what they learned. We'll have the video of the panel discussion on the blog next, so check back to watch it in full.

Seven take aways from Gregory FCA's national media panel

Panelist Sree Sreenivasen kicking off the discussion

This weekend I had the opportunity to take some time and process the findings from our recent national media panel round table that Gregory FCA brought to Philadelphia to help gain national perspective on The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media.

The biggest conclusion is that much of what we heard from a panel that included reporters, writers, editors, and managers from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, USA Today, Forbes, and others is that the media is struggling with many of the same issues facing corporate America.

And in some ways, they are leading the pack in how to leverage these new communications avenues to gain attention, tell stronger stories, and build bonds and brands that resonate with audiences. Here's the DL from top media across the country.

Tiger Woods' reputation craters after press conference

The great PR debate rages on whether Tiger Woods' strategy for reclaiming his reputation worked, and whether the mea culpa performance last Friday helped or harmed his future.

But hey, the proof is in the pudding. You can debate whether Tiger was wooden or sincere, and if his attempted manipulation hindered or helped. But an online analysis that we performed internal to Gregory FCA shows his strategy failed ... miserably.

By analyzing over 100 million blogs, forums, message boards, tweets, and traditional media over the weekend, we discovered that, as of today, Tiger's sentiment among the American public is lower than at any time since the controversy erupted last November. It has fallen further since his so-called press conference.

SUNK: Tiger's reputation is on the downswing (click to enlarge)